Two towering heavyweights, with the power and personality to thrust heavyweight boxing back to the front page of the sports section for the first time in 20 years, was within arm's reach. All they had to do was sign the contract.
Deontay Wilder held up his end with a bone-crunching knockout in Brooklyn last month. But the other half of the big bout just blew it, and thus we have boxing back in its longtime cauldron of chaos.
Anthony Joshua, whom many figured was better than Wilder, came to Madison Square Garden from the U.K. to make his American debut. Yet instead of planting his flag in the Mecca of Boxing, he was planted on the canvas by a man no one knew until he floored the champ four times leading up to a shocking, seventh-round TKO before the stunned fans in the arena, and millions more around the world.
Andy Ruiz Jr. -- built more like a part-time bouncer than a pro boxer -- pulled off the biggest upset in the heavyweight division since Buster Douglas battered Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990. The difference in physique, in resumé and in arsenal made this fight so soporific that no one considered it more than a glorified sparring session until Joshua could finally duck under the ropes and face his American antagonist, Wilder.
Making matters worse, and the upset all the more baffling, was that Ruiz (33-1) wasn't even Joshua's original opponent. Jarrell Miller was supposed to fight Joshua but was dropped from the bout after testing positive for PEDs. So not only was Ruiz not on the horizon, he only had six weeks to prep for the fight (imagine his flabby physique at the time) and had to beg the fight's shot-callers for a chance to take on the champ. Now the squatty champ walks out the joint with three (WBA, WBO, and IBF) of the division's four belts.
So instead of a standalone heavyweight fight that would generate the cash and cachet not seen since the halcyon years of Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe and Mike Tyson, the sport is left scrambling for some PR balm for the bloody gash Ruiz just ripped open throughout pro boxing.
An athlete’s body doesn’t reveal his heart. Some who are built like Apollo Creed are chumps while the less flattering physiques can become champs. But the gap in height and body fat just italicized the difference between Ruiz and Joshua -- until they rang the bell and Ruiz rang Joshua’s bell.
Two weeks ago, this slice of cyberspace warned matchmakers that boxing is too perilous and precarious to wait for megafights like the one between Joshua (now 22-1) and Deontay Wilder (40-0-1). The fight would have yielded epic pay-per-view buys and substantial checks for both combatants. But instead of eight-digit paydays and a groundswell of anticipation, Joshua vs. Wilder will simmer on the symbolic backburner for, well, who knows how long?
There's a glowing allure to undefeated fighters in their prime fighting each other. There's a certain appeal to that zero in the loss column, no matter how many tomato cans were smashed to get there. No matter the sport, unbeaten athletes draw eyes, fill seats and grab ratings. No matter how far boxing had fallen over the last two decades, there was a palpable rise in the sport, with TV networks and DAZN dumping hundreds of millions of dollars to spark the sport's revival.
Sports often double as a metaphor for life. If you wait too long to ask her on a date, someone else will. Wait too long to apply for that job, and someone else snags it. Wait too long to eat right and hit the gym, and your body fails you. And so on.